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Over Plating is Dangerous?


Brian 65

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Hi new to boating and while looking up over plating, I came across this. (See below) I know that this will have a lot of views on this, but doesn't this guy know what he is on about? just because it is always done doesn't make it correct does it?

It's a long read.

 

The dangers of overplating (iims.org.uk)

 

 

The dangers of overplating

Posted on March 17, 2017 by News Hound
Surveyors take note - overplating does not constitute a repair on a steel hull Surveyors take note – overplating does not constitute a repair on a steel hull

Feature article written by Alan Broomfield MIIMS, who tackles the thorny subject of overplating on steel hulled vessels, in particular Dutch barges and Narrowboats.

It is common practice when in the field surveying steel vessels to find mild steel plates welded to the hull, a practice regularly carried out on leisure vessels as a permanent repair. If any defects are found on the shell of a metal boat during a survey, surveyors are all too quick to recommend that the area concerned be overplated. Marine surveyors who deal with steel vessels will find that very often – Dutch barges and canal boats in particular – are frequently heavily overplated and should remember at all times that such overplating does NOT constitute a repair. It merely hides the defect.

I have recently seen an overplating welded job done to an existing doubling plate on a Dutch barge moored on a gravel tidal mooring. The result was a two foot crack in the second over plate allowing water to down flood between the plates nearly sinking the vessel which was only saved by the occupants having sufficient bilge pumps to keep her afloat until she could get into dock.

I feel overplating should never be allowed on an existing doubling plate even though such bad practice is often found. It is a very bad practice and should be condemned and highlighted within our reports. If doubling or overplating is found on a vessel, the marine surveyor should remember the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Wherever possible, doubling or overplating should be avoided and any defective steel cropped out and renewed. It should never be carried out on round bilges and never doubling over existing doubling plates. However, one occasionally sees this and it should be strictly taboo.

Doubling or overplating can only ever be regarded as bad practice, a cheap bodge job and is intellectually dishonest. It is often carried out on leisure vessels to cover over areas of pitting which is not necessarily the best solution. Pitting, if small in area and localised, is often best dealt with by back filling the pits with welding rather than extensive overplating. Pitting on non structual interior bulkheads can often be satisfactorily filled with a plastic metal paste such as Belzona but this method of repair should not be used on shell plating. Plastic metal should only be used on single pits on water/ballast tank plating or in areas where heat is not allowed or unsafe (fuel tanks).

Finally, the marine surveyor should remember that overplating, though a common practice, is often carried out without thought as to the unintended consequences.
We should realise that it adds weight to the vessel’s structure without adding much compensating volume and, as a direct result, the vessel necessarily sinks lower in the water. It also has a number of other unintended and often unrealised side effects.

1. By increasing the draft, it reduces the available freeboard and, therefore, the amount of reserve buoyancy.
2. It also, therefore, reduces the transverse metacentric radius (BMT), and slightly, increases the height of the centre of buoyancy (KB) usually with very little compensating reduction in the height of the centre of gravity (KG) so that the end result is a reduction in the metacentric height (GM) and a negative alteration to the characteristics of the statical stability curve i.e. a reduction in the maximum GZ value and the range of positive statical stability. [The average metacentric height of a narrowboat is about 150 mm (6 inches)].
3. It may also, depending upon where the overplating is sited, alter both the longitudinal trim and the transverse heel of the vessel with further indeterminate alterations in her statical stability curve.
4. It lowers the deck edge immersion angle and, therefore, any downflooding angle(s).
5. The double plating is usually not secured to the primary supporting structure – the shell side framing. It is also rarely fitted with centre plate plug welds and is dependent only on the edge weld for security.
6. The double plating is secured only at its edges and the greater the area of plate, the smaller the length of the attachment weld per unit area and, therefore, the greater the stresses in those welds.
7. The corrosion or pitting, being the reason for fitting the doubling plates, means the corrosion or pitting will still remain there and, if it is on the inside of the original shell plate, will still be increasing. Doubling, therefore, is merely hiding the problem, not repairing it.

The marine surveyor should remember that time spent considering the consequences of his actions is never wasted. A lot (too many) of boats, particularly inland narrow boats and private pleasure boats, are doubled or over plated to various degrees in both terms of area and quality of welding and finish. When presented with a vessel that has a length of 6 mm plate some 250 mm or so wide welded astride the normally laden waterline, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the plating in way has severe corrosion or pitting (for whatever reason) and that somebody in the past has recommended overplating as a cure.

At this point the marine surveyor’s mind should go into cause and effect mode and ask “How extensive was the defect? Could it have been more simply rectified by grinding out and back welding an area of pitting? Was the corrosion arrested before the doubling was fitted?” That said many of those questions are academic as the answers to most of them are well and truly hidden from view which only leads to speculation. In cases where the marine surveyor finds the situation described applied to both sides of the hull, another question arises – “Did both sides of the vessel’s hull exhibit the same degree of damage or was the double plating simply applied to both port and starboard sides to ensure maintenance of lateral stability or appearance?”

If the plate is badly pitted or where the actual thicknesses, as measured, of bottom or side shell plating fall below allowable minimum, the metal structure in way requires remedial treatment within time limits to be laid down by the marine surveyor. It is, in the author’s opinion, (and for that matter also apparently that of the MCA who will not allow doubling plates of any size – particularly on passenger boats – to be fitted except as a ‘get you home’ emergency measure) far better to crop out such thin areas back to metal of an acceptable thickness and renew the plate in way although it is accepted that that is more difficult, time consuming and costly.

The marine surveyor should also be aware that the heat from the welding and subsequent cooling in air alters the microstructure of the steel and, if a doubling plate is fitted, the underlying steel becomes brittle and can fracture, particularly in cold weather.

Care should also be taken when doubling plates pass over a riveted seam or butt as the weld can draw the nearby rivets causing them to leak. It is good practice where a doubling plate edge traverses a seam or butt to cap weld the rivets alongside the cross over point. Even that has to be done with care otherwise an inordinate amount of time can be spent rivet chasing. It is a common experience, particularly in Dutch barges and canal boats, to find the whole of the bottom doubled. That clearly begs the question as to the condition of the original shell plating underneath the doubling plates and the marine surveyor should be very wary indeed of vessels that have had so much overplating.

The US Coast Guard states that, in certain cases which they do not define, a welded doubling plate may be used in lieu of a crop and insert repair for the permanent repair of small damaged areas lying wholly within an individual plating panel but they also, quite rightly in the author’s view, do not allow the use of doubling plates in the strength deck, bottom or shell plating or part of the main hull strength girder. They also state that such doubling plates or patch plates in American terminology – are inadvisable in areas of high corrosion and the author would most certainly concur with that.

Doubling plates also tend to rust from the inside faying surface outward.

The marine surveyor should note that, when an area of plating is doubled, the presence of these doublers creates a structural discontinuity. That may induce rather than prevent a structural failure. We should also note that doubling plates tend to proliferate as randomly placed items that, in reality, tend to cover up deficiencies that would otherwise show up the true condition of the hull. It is also common practice to leave such doubling plates with square corners.

This is bad practice as it raises a hard spot on the corner from which cracks in the shell plating may propagate.

When the marine surveyor comes across existing doubling plates with square corners he should closely inspect the shell for cracks using a dye penetrant if thought necessary. Doubling plates can also flex and vibrate causing the edge welding to crack. If such cracking is found here, again, a dye penetrant is useful to find the extent of the crack.

The marine surveyor should also be aware the estimated plate frequency be checked against the revolutions per minute of the main engine (and the generator engine if fitted) and also against the propeller blade frequency. i.e., the shaft revolutions multiplied by the number of propeller blades. If the ratio of any of these factors to the estimated plate frequency is a whole number then it would be as well to investigate the possibility of engine or propeller excited vibration causing the cracking. The marine surveyor should bear in mind that steelwork repairs and plate replacements are never cheap but that the potential consequences of not carrying out proper repairs are far more costly and traumatic.

Overplating Photograph 1 Overplating Photograph 1

These factors made me put pen to paper when I was recently asked to look at a narrow boat which had been purchased without a survey that being the first mistake. The owner had the vessel out of the water for blacking and had decided to have the hull thickness determination for future maintenance.

The vessel had a doubling plate close welded between the whisker harpins on the port bow. I was suspicious of the area around and behind the doubling plate due to the poor quality of the welding and suspected the latter to be porous to water ingress as the plate was below the water line.

The upper whisker harpins were found to be suffering from jacking corrosion which had been instigated from the D bar only being stitch welded along the top and bottom of the bar which is also a common defect found on such vessels as the builder can save time and money by not seam welding such bars.

Overplating Photograph 2 Overplating Photograph 2

However, the defect in this case was compounded when the shell plate was found to be holed above the harpin. The hole can clearly be seen in Photograph 1 which shows the area of the vessel as first seen. It was also noted that a poor repair had been carried out below the lower harpin forward and the shell plate was also found to have excessive pitting just aft of the stem.

The upper harpin and doubling plate were cut off while I was on site by grinding off the welds and Photographs 2 and 3 show clearly the heavily corroded inner repair plate and appalling condition of the underlying shell plate.

Photograph 4 shows the faying surface of the doubling plate that was removed and which can be clearly seen to be corroding from the inside outward. It can also be seen in this photograph the doubling plate had been welded to the harpin in places making the doubling plates seam weld porous to water to entering between the doubling plate via the gaps created when the D sections harpins were originally stitch welded in manufacture. The fault would have been compounded by crevice corrosion and a poor maintenance programme though out the vessel’s life.

Overplating Photograph 3 Overplating Photograph 3

The only possible repair to that damage is a complete crop out of derogated steel work and new steel close welded in to the aperture and new D section bar fitted to the shell side and which should be seam welded fully along the top and bottom of the bar.

In a recent video available on the web, a broker was seen to be stating that the narrow boat he was showing required the whole side to be doubled because of a single pit (apparently due to microbiological attack) that had been found by a surveyor. He also stated that the doubling would increase the strength of the hull and give the vessel an extra life of twenty years. Both statements are clearly nonsense.

However, overplating is a repair that is regularly accepted by brokers and the pleasure vessel users community and it is our duty to educate them that these repairs are not a cheap way out.

Overplating Photograph 4 Overplating Photograph 4

Patrick Keating, who regularly lifts narrow boats at South Dock, has stated that he has seen a number of such vessels where the bottom plating was sagging because the whole area had been doubled and where the doubling plates were unattached to the frames or even the remains of the original bottom plate.

He stated that, on one vessel, the welder, who was about to work on it, started to cut out a section of plate and, as soon as the plate was broached, water started pouring out. The bilges were immediately checked and found to be dry and it was estimated that at least 500 litres of water had been trapped between the doubled bottom and the original shell with the water getting between them from the bilge through holes in the original bottom plate.

I have also seen water pouring out from doubling plates on the shell plate sides through pin holes found in the seam weld whilst carrying out survey’s and try to make a point of viewing the vessel being lifted from the water.

The obvious problem with this practice was that the doubled shell plating can corrode from the inside out with no external evidence of the problem is not usually seen and can often go undetected until too late. In recommending the fitting of doubling plates the marine surveyor must take even more into account than the increase in draught and loss of freeboard due to the added weight. For example, a forty foot long narrow boat will have a tons per inch immersion value of about 0.55. If her bottom is fitted with a 6 mm thick doubling plate over about 30 feet of her bottom by the full width she will sink by about 1½ inches with an equal loss of freeboard plus a deleterious change in her metacentric stability and down flooding angles.

Here it is probably apposite to quote the case of the narrow boat MINI MOO ex MARY MINT. The following is quoted verbatim from a Safety Bulletin issued by the Port of London Authority: –
On the 24th August 2012, a narrow boat was delivered by road to South Dock Marina in London for a new owner. The vessel was lifted into the dock and the new owner requested to lock out of the marina as they had an overnight berth in Lime House Marina; a short distance up the River Thames. The vessel departed the lock at 17:00 with 5 adults and 1 dog aboard. As they departed the lock the lock keeper commented to them that they should have lifejackets on board as they appeared to be missing. The crew decided to continue on and left the lock with 3 adults in the aft cockpit and 2 adults in the cabin. The vessel transited directly across the river to the starboard side of the channel and then turned upriver towards Lime House Marina. Shortly into their transit the crew noted a change in the engine note and opened the engine room hatch to find the engine half submerged. All persons quickly moved to the stern to try and bail out the engine room, but were unable to cope with the ingress of water into the vessel. The engine room continued to fill with water and flooded into the main cabin, submerging the aft coaming below the water, resulting in severe flooding of the vessel which sank within 10 seconds. All of the crew and the dog entered the water without lifejackets, but were rescued by a nearby RIB and Police Launch.

Marine surveyors and others concerned with narrowboats should obtain a copy of the Bulletin from the PLA and take note of its recommendations.

It was noted by the PLA that the vessel had been the subject of extensive overplating. Whoever had recommended the overplating had also recommended partly blocking off the engine room air jalousie on the port side as its bottom edge was considered even then to be too near the waterline. The following Figure 1 below shows the effect of the overplating and the number of persons seated aft.

The buyer of the MINI MOO bought the boat on the strength of a survey report provided by the seller. The marine surveyor concerned had estimated the height of the engine air intake jalousie from water level marks on the hull although the vessel had been out of the water for a considerable time prior to his survey. He had estimated the intake to be 200 mm above the waterline but when it measured after the salvage it was only 65 mm. The marine surveyor had covered himself with the caveat that it was an estimate only. In that particular case, when the vessel sank, no life jackets were on board and at least one person on board could not swim. The survivors were very lucky that nearby boats managed to pluck them from the water immediately. The fact that a marine surveyor’s report perhaps covers him with words such as estimated does not provide much comfort if bodies have to be pulled from the water.

Figure 1: Detail of Engine Jalousie on MINI MOO Figure 1: Detail of Engine Jalousie on MINI MOO

 

 

 

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I have posted this, and extracts from it, a number of times, you will find that the general response is :

 

He's a surveyor, Making work. Justifying surveyors existence.

The IIMS, justifying their existence,

We always done it this way, 

Not relevant to NBs etc etc.

 

And there may well be elements of this that are true, but I found it an instructive and logically presented argument.

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Clearly there are boats badly overplated, eg with water in between. But there are also boats well overplated which seems, by the sheer number carried out and absence of consequential sinkings, to be a reasonable method of repair. The Surveyor’s diatribe contains some good stuff, but also quite a lot of opinion expressed as if it were fact. That tendency always annoys me!

  • Greenie 4
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In a perfect world, he is right. The  proper repair is to cut out the bad and let in new plate of suitable thickness.

 

In the real world this is not always practicable. Replacement plate means stripping ( and probably renewing some or all of)  the fit out, .  It may also mean an engine and gearbox removal.   This can  can make the job financially unviable. In riveted craft renewal is  also as a likely as overplating to cause rivet problems.  For large areas of renewal   structural support of the remaining boat during repair can be a problem too.  Overplating  does not have these problems, and is relatively low cost.  It may make it possible to realise value from a hull that is otherwise scrap.

 

That is not to say that overplating is easy.   You need to choose a competent plater and welder who will ensure that the over plating is watertight and properly secured to the sub structure and original plate.  Sufficient Plug welds or àsimilar  are important in big areas. You have to do the whole of the job- guard irons off,  repairs to framing if needed, ring welded rivets etc. etc....Then  the owner needs to deal with the consequences of adding weight.  The surveyor does have a role here- if recommending overplating the Surveyor should remind the owner that ballast adjustment will be needed.

 

The examples chosen were clearly selected to support the Surveyors view point.  They are though a good example of a bodge.  Why the job was a bodge, I don't know.   I suspect money, and the availability of a local welder and dock may have been factors.  Overall though I don't think they  are examples that are actually

On 30/10/2017 at 22:22, Markinaboat said:

 

helpful to the quoted Surveyor's argument.  IMO it would have been more useful to have identified the criteria for a good overplating job, using the photos and his arguments as counter examples.

N

  • Greenie 1
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55 minutes ago, BEngo said:

proper repair is to cut out the bad and let in new plate of suitable thickness.

 

In the real world this is not always practicable. Replacement plate means stripping ( and probably renewing some or all of)  the fit out, .  It may also mean an engine and gearbox removal.   This can  can make the job financially unviable.

Indeed. If you cut away all the steelwork for the full length of the boat, and take away the internal fit out, then remove the engine and gearbox, there is really not a lot left.

 

The quoted article is scaremongering at its best, designed to promote the self-interests of various interested groups. Overplating, when carried out by an experienced and capable professional repairer, is a perfectly good technique. But there are also quite a few bodgers out there. The problem is, how do you tell which is which?

  • Greenie 1
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You will have to look hard to find a boat over 30 - 40 years old hat has not had some overplating done.  Many much more recent than that. Ideally the old plate would be cut out and new plating fitted, not so difficult on a working boat perhaps but on a converted or leisure boat? Most narrow boats have floors that will not come up without taking the boat apart. There are narrow boats that I would love to own that were built in the 19th century, Heaven knows what lies below the waterline but it is not all original, same with Dutch barges of myriad sorts, many from pre 1st world war, overplating, re plating, rivets welded over, much of it less than perfect but the alternative is to rebuild old boats or scrap them. Narrowboats are mostly flat sheets of steel, little or no shape in them, tremendously strong, structurally over engineered, never likely to be out in the North sea in a gale and relatively easily repaired. So long as the repair is OK then I would be happy to own a boat with overplating.

  • Greenie 2
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Mine's been overplated twice. The first one failed simply because they didn't leave a sacrificing strip on one side but welded flush to the side of the hull and the welded edge wore away. I presume the bit of steel plate they got just wasn't quite the right size.  It still lasted twenty years. The boat's still going, no idea how old it is, probably fifty years by now, maybe a bit older.

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3 hours ago, Keeping Up said:

Overplating, when carried out by an experienced and capable professional repairer, is a perfectly good technique. But there are also quite a few bodgers out there. The problem is, how do you tell which is which?

 

Exactly, which might be a good reason to avoid buying overplated boats unless one knows the reputation of those who did the overplating or one employs the services is a surveyor who can differentiate between good work and botches.

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9 hours ago, blackrose said:

 

Exactly, which might be a good reason to avoid buying overplated boats unless one knows the reputation of those who did the overplating or one employs the services is a surveyor who can differentiate between good work and botches.

And a surveyor will include so many caveats and get-out clauses his opinion will be meaningless. Best, unless you're rich enough to buy a new boat (obviously from a reputable builder), not buy a boat at all...

And yet... Here I am, still afloat after thirty years.

  • Greenie 2
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Looked at a small flat bottomed boat some years ago ( not a narrowboat, small 'Westlander type barge')  with  a rusty, scaly, leaky bottom, thin pitted sides and thought the best thing to do would be to cut the entire bottom off complete with the lower foot of the sides and make an identical structure and weld the lot together with a 12" wide band of steel over the join. This would mean the entire boat would have a strip of overplated hull all around it and I reckon this would have been a good job even if some of it was technically overplated. Nice little boat that was a few mm over 7` and would have fitted some narrow canals. Then I thought stuff that, its far too much work and did something more sensible - went on holiday if I recall.

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I've posted on this subject before, but I would warn against poorly executed overplating.  Our 110 year old butty had been overplated on top of overplating!  Rust was quietly able to eat its way through from the inside and in between the plates.  When removing some of the scale from the inside, my son punched a hole right through. Yes, the water did come in.

The only solution was to have a proper job done.

710269405_20161228_112257(1).jpg.df6544065b429324a8906bf2d781747b.jpgP1210318.JPG.33a4842f2264f3aebc8001147a29194a.JPG

  • Greenie 1
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When we brought the NB Crane from Willow Wren in 1980  we could see the obvious problems and could see nothing wrong with the hull. However when we came to do some work in the hold prior to getting set up for camping boating came across lots of scale on the inside of the footings. Not wishing to go through the side whilst afloat had her pulled up the railway at Braunston and saw that it had been overplayed all round the footings. Apparently this was done at Brentford in the 1960s and other joshers had had the same treatment. 
When we brought our barge in Belgium in 2001 the surveyor found that the starboard side bilge plates were thin in places and needed overplaying or cutting out. As the boat was converted cutting out would have been a major job and disturbance to the fit out. It was decided to overplate up to just below the level of the cabin internal lining to try and limit the risk of a fire. Good job done in a very experienced shipyard. This barge was built in 1917 and the steel was originally 5.5mm thick so there was bound to be wear on pitting over this time. When we sold in 2018 a few more overplayed patches had been done as well.

1175E897-923E-4461-A6E4-60D31CF6F3B3.jpeg

3C56C80C-82D1-4202-BAC8-69D8602FC3AC.jpeg

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22 minutes ago, Dav and Pen said:

When we brought the NB Crane from Willow Wren in 1980  we could see the obvious problems and could see nothing wrong with the hull. However when we came to do some work in the hold prior to getting set up for camping boating came across lots of scale on the inside of the footings. Not wishing to go through the side whilst afloat had her pulled up the railway at Braunston and saw that it had been overplayed all round the footings. Apparently this was done at Brentford in the 1960s and other joshers had had the same treatment. 
When we brought our barge in Belgium in 2001 the surveyor found that the starboard side bilge plates were thin in places and needed overplaying or cutting out. As the boat was converted cutting out would have been a major job and disturbance to the fit out. It was decided to overplate up to just below the level of the cabin internal lining to try and limit the risk of a fire. Good job done in a very experienced shipyard. This barge was built in 1917 and the steel was originally 5.5mm thick so there was bound to be wear on pitting over this time. When we sold in 2018 a few more overplayed patches had been done as well.

1175E897-923E-4461-A6E4-60D31CF6F3B3.jpeg

3C56C80C-82D1-4202-BAC8-69D8602FC3AC.jpeg

Think your timings are out. We looked at Crane at Rugby Wharf over the winter of 80/81. When we looked inside the counter you could see outside through the metelwork

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1 hour ago, Tonka said:

Think your timings are out. We looked at Crane at Rugby Wharf over the winter of 80/81. When we looked inside the counter you could see outside through the metelwork

Yes we could see that the counter was in need of attention and also the cabin itself but didn’t spot that the footings forward of the engine hole had been overplayed. Inside the hold it just looked like rust and some scale. I’m not to good at dates and was just going by when it started camping with us so must have been purchased in 81 thanks.

  • Happy 1
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